Talk:Girl Meets STEM/@comment-26999065-20160109040340
First thing I have to say – Ava was the funniest part of the episode. Well, Ava, Auggie, and Topanga’s bit. I didn’t catch the OJ mistake mentioned, but minor continuity problems like that in a show like this don’t bother me. One might just as well assume not every second is shown (so things happen and time often passes off camera) and during a brief break before Ava’s appearance, Topanga put more juice in the glass. It's not like she put the juice carton back in the fridge in the first place, but left it on the table since, one would surmise, she intended to pour more juice soon. Otherwise, she would have put it back in the fridge. So a minor and "apparent" continuity problem is not a big deal, particularly when it can easily be explained away like that. Again, what a wonderful flash of insight on Riley’s part – the leap she made when realizing the experiment wasn’t about the sludge but was about the students and their choices was remarkably quick, and Farkle missed it – though props to Farkle who could correctly identify the marble as nothing more than dirt. Frankly, I doubt an 8th grade science student would have the equipment or scientific knowledge to rule out other possibilities - though home might have meant Minkus International, and who knows what scientific equipment they might have laying around at home? Anyway, I do wonder how realistic it is for a chemistry teacher to run a social experiment using the kids as test subjects, but it was harmless enough, and perhaps instructive enough to make it worthwhile. But it’s fair comment at the end when Norton said their school was messed up, or something to that effect. It’s a humorous jab at how he and Cory teach, often teaching things quite removed from the subjects each one supposedly teaches. One must assume, of course, Norton deliberately paired each boy with a girl to run this experiment – no way would that arrangement just happen naturally every year he’s been running the thing. And it seemed obvious that since there was no reason to divide the labor in the first place that each partner could have done the science together after the marble had been dropped, so the whole thing clearly wasn’t really a chemistry experiment at all. It made little sense as a chemistry experiment. It made great sense, however, as a social experiment. But, as insightful as Riley was there, also shame on Riley for accusing Farkle of being, and calling him, a sexist pig with no real evidence of that. That’s what we call bigoted or prejudicial assumptions. Sadly, too many feminists I have met assume just because somebody is a man, he must be that way. That’s just not true. But, thankfully, not all, nor even most feminists are like that – and in the end, Riley and Maya claimed to be feminists, but also felt their male classmates were pretty good guys, so I would not include those two amongst the wrong kind of feminists. In actual fact, more women achieve more advanced degrees than men these days, though they are less represented in the hard science – STEM – and more in the softer social sciences. But the main problem is not what women can or cannot achieve, but their tendency to prioritize family and children more than men do in their 20’s and 30’s and drop out of the fields to pursue more family oriented goals. Part of it is biology – not suggesting women aren’t as smart, but their biological clock does run down quicker than a man’s (for the ability to still have kids while older) and it’s in those years when science careers are made. It’s just hard to have it all, but that’s not the fault of any man made law or sexist attitude. Women who prioritize their careers over their family or kids often achieve the same levels as men in those fields, so if that’s what they want, they can have it. But on the whole, statistically speaking, it’ll never look like men and women are equally represented in all things. However, there are still problems, and this episode addresses some of them. Assumptions women can’t do science, if anyone is still making them, are demonstrably wrong. A lack of encouragement for women is still all too prevalent in their male counterparts. That fact all the girls, except Riley, were told to and were willing to drop the marble and let the guys do the rest demonstrates this. And later, a lack of female peer support makes it more likely that women will drop out early. How big this problem is, I leave to others to debate, but it is a problem. Funny episode in many places. No love triangle progress, but I’m fine with that. It’ll happen when it happens.